Pipettes

As Gwenno Saunders tells it, the idea first struck her poolside in Las Vegas, where she was playing nine shows a week as the lead in Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance. Her stage career was taking off, but she was starting to pine for her native Cardiff. “Suddenly, there were all these bands coming out of Wales then, like Catatonia and Super Furry Animals,” she sighs. “And I was like, ‘Hang on a minute! What am I doing in Vegas, when I could be home seeing all these bands?’” So she bid farewell to Flatley, and hello to her second love, music. Recording exclusively in Welsh, Saunders parlayed one cut—“Vodya,” based on a Cornish poem by her father—all the way to the Alternate Eurovision Song Contest in the Netherlands, where she won the People’s Choice Award. Two Welsh Music Awards later, her solo path seemed set.

But then came the fateful night Saunders dropped by the Cardiff Barfly to see her latest fave, The Go! Team. She knew nothing about the opening act, a retro girl group from Brighton called the Pipettes. “But when I saw,” she gasps, “I was like, ‘That’s the answer, the answer I’m looking for right now!’ Because I was getting frustrated with making pop music on my own, in my bedroom, and all I needed to find was other people to make it with.” Intrigued, she ventured backstage, met guitarist/mastermind Monster Bobby and founding frontwoman Julia—whom she learned was leaving to form the Indelicates—and boldly demanded an audition. “Within three weeks,” she adds, “I was playing my first gig as a Pipette.”

The Pipettes—co-vocalists Rosay and RiotBecki and four backing musicians, all of whom pen material—perfected their punky take on sugary Shangri-Las harmonies, updating the old Goffin/King tune “He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss” to where they’re doing most of the smacking (see singalongs like “One Night Stand,” “Why Did You Stay?” and “Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me”). The introductory single, “Pull Shapes”—from the forthcoming We Are The Pipettes album—is so authentically vintage it feels like a relic of the ’60s. Top it off with the gals’ matching polka-dot dresses and campy, choreographed stage routines, and what you’ve got might not be the next Radiohead, but it certainly makes for a cheery, diverting night out.

In fact, there’s only been one small snafu, Saunders says—she’s no longer catered to by swank Lord costumers. “When I got my stage dress last time, I’d really wanted a superhero cape. But the girl who made our dresses made me a bustle instead. It was a lovely dress, but I, uh, never really wanted a bustle to draw attention to that area! So I’ve resorted to making my own dress this time.”